Published by FORSEA on May 23, 2024
Phnom Penh, Cambodia: Dr Maung Zarni, the co-author of the 2014 study “The Slow-burning Genocide of Myanmar’s Rohingya” told the BBC World Service Newsday Programme on 22 May that the genocidal process is unfolding again in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, albeit the principal perpetrators are ultra-nationalist Arakan Army of ethnic Rakhins.
Zarni adds his voice to the growing chorus of those warning of genocide, such as former UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Myanmar, Professor Yanghee Lee, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk, and ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights, as well as a number of Rohingya human rights organizations such as the Free Rohingya Coalition and Burmese Rohingya Organization UK.
The renowned scholar and activist also offered his comprehensive analysis of the countrywide violent conflicts between Myanmar’s embattled junta and hundreds of anti-junta armed organisations. While stressing his personal support for the people’s armed struggle against the military regime – in power for 6-decades since 1962 – Dr Zarni ruled out a Zero Sum military defeat of the junta by the resistance forces. He calls on powerful Asian neighbors such as India, China, Thailand, and Bangladesh directly effected by the spillover of the war in Myanmar to hold a joint international peace conference in the region to work out a comprehensive peace framework encompassing the entire Myanmar.
Zarni emphasised, “there needs to be a safe exit for Myanmar junta. They have nowhere to go, (unlike the previous repressive regimes in pre-independence Burma such as the British colonials and the Japanese Fascists). He spoke to the BBC from the sidelines of the genocide conference – The Future of Cambodia without Genocide – at the former Khmer Rouge Tribunal, jointly hosted by the Office of the Prime Minister of Cambodia and the Documentation Center – Cambodia. At the conference, former Prime Minister Hun Sen who has been pushing for a peace process of a sort in Myanmar, without much success so far, sounded alarm about Israel’s killing of innocent people in Gaza everyday.
Listen HERE –
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w172zbjzmq06gtl
More information:
“‘Nowhere to go’: Rohingya face arson attacks in Myanmar’s Rakhine State” – aljazera.com
“Rohingya Facing Existential Threat in Arakan” – Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK (BROUK)
“Joint Statement: Rohingya Facing Existential Threat in Arakan” – Rohingya Today
“History haunts Myanmar’s ‘triangle of death'” – Nikkei Asia
